Wisconsin Native, Peace Activist Tom Laughlin Dies at 82

In an interview by phone in 2005 Laughlin recalled to me old high school football games in Milwaukee (Milwaukee's Washington High School) during which he often got into fights during games after the opposing teams' players called his teammates, "niggers," a common occurrence in Milwaukee at the time. Laughlin never did like racists, in real life and in film.

Reprinted below is a 2005 piece, during the depths of the Iraq Invasion.

By Jackie Captain and Michael
Leon

In 1951 an intense young man
named Tom Laughlin was a brilliant student-athlete at UW-Madison after UW
coaches talked the Milwaukee native into transferring from Indiana to play
football for the Badgers the night before the Indiana-Wisconsin game in
Bloomington.

Twenty years later Laughlin made
cinematic history producing and starring in the anti-racism, peace film Billy Jack that for decades was the most
successful independent film ever produced.

The iconic Billy Jack title character played by
Laughlin became a model for the martial-arts Norris-Stallone-Seagal portrayals
of the solitary hero inclined to kick the crap out of all manner of bigoted,
war-mongering, corporate bad guys.

Now, as the American peace
movement is criticized as for its lack of vibrancy, Laughlin is producing a
sequel to Billy Jack while
simultaneously launching a nationwide campaign with the express purpose of
alerting the nation to the dangers the Bush administration poses to the republic
and halting the war in Iraq.

Before you smile inside and think
“Yea, good luck,” know that the man and his people are deadly serious, and that
from a marketing perspective, Laughlin is considered a pioneering whiz whose
innovations in marketing the Billy
Jack series have been adopted as routine by an initially-skeptical
Hollywood.

“Laughlin has broken box office
records on long shots. The conditions are perfect for Laughlin’s Iraq campaign.
Bush politically is as weak as he ever has been. Delay and Rove are scandals
waiting to explode. The majority of Americans for the first time realize they
have been lied to, and even congressional Republicans are beginning to see Iraq
as a political liability,” said Michael Victor, an activist hosting a meet-up of investors in the Billy Jack sequel in Madison on July 22,
23. “Laughlin can capture imaginations in a way that few artists can. And the
brand value of Billy Jack is gold
worldwide. The movie is a slam dunk; ending the war, no kidding, is
fifty/fifty.”

The focus of a fawning June 20 New York Times 1,162-word feature by
Sharon Waxman, Laughlin - reached by phone for two one-hour interviews from his
California home outside of Los Angeles on July 4th weekend - sounds
like one-third filmmaker, one-third peace activist, and one-third,
controlled-but-very-angry citizen resembling in some ways his Billy Jack character of the 1970s.

“Let me be real clear. We are out
now fighting for America. This is a war, what’s going on in this country is
terrifying beyond terrifying. We are going to take this country back,” said
Laughlin, emphasizing every syllable and sounding with his crisp diction like a
beefy Carl Sagan.

The still-handsome 73-year-old
writer activist defied industry experts 34 years ago and demolished every
production and creative obstacle to his stunning cinematic success, and has
dedicated his work to peace as he and his wife Delores Taylor are taking a final
grand swing for the fences.

Ending the Iraq War

Laughlin and his organization
plan to demonstrate conclusively to mainstream America that Bush lied America
into war, launch a full-fledged, intricate campaign to end the war and hold Bush
accountable for what he asserts are Bush’s lies.

Following the campaign he will
release the film, and is now raising $12 million through his website
BillyJack.com and EndtheIraqWar.com, where details on his peace plan can also be
found.

“What we are doing is we are
starting this national crusade end the war in Iraq and to bring the troops home
by Christmas. To prove to the American people that it is incredibly doable, that
it’s not silly, that it’s not wild-eyed. The bottom line we are doing a
five-step national event program, taking full-page ads, TV spots, sending out
DVDs, proving beyond any question that this war was to occupy Iraq as an oil
colony,” said Laughlin.

Laughlin’ peace plan:

Demonstrate that Bush invaded Iraq to establish an oil colony
through publishing six full page national ads of meticulously-researched facts,
and an aggressive media campaign.

Hold a 10-million, 100-city End the War rally on Patriots Day,
9/1Hold a nationally-televised People’s Hearing on the
war

Consolidate the internet peace movementAnd expand outreach through the worldwide, simultaneous release
of the movie “Billy’s Jack’s Crusade to the End the War and Restore America to
Its Moral Purpose”

Laughlin is preaching to the
choir worldwide and the majority of Americans nationally; and his ambition is
that come Christmas, public opinion will overwhelm an already-weak presidency,
forcing Bush to succumb to domestic and worldwide demands.

Child Activist Becomes Intellectual and
Filmmaker

Since junior-high school when he
became best friends with the only black kid in school in what remains the most
segregated city in America - a racist-infected Milwaukee - Laughlin has taken on
the odds and befriended the underdog in what he sees as the American way.

“For me, this is not a matter of
working for peace and justice as if peace and justice were some sort of a
separate arena. Peace is nothing more than respecting the rights of others,”
said Laughlin who identifies himself closely with what he sees as America’s
revolutionary and spiritual origins. ‘Peace is nothing more than what makes the
true American. The ultimate test of what makes a true American is not freedom of
speech, other countries have that. It is my determination, ‘though I detest what
you say,’ as Patrick Henry said, ‘I will defend to the death your right to say
it.’ Peace is the necessary dialogue that must take place with criticism and
dissent in a peaceful, respectful way.”

Laughlin says that George W.
Bush/Karl Rove - aligned with what he views as rapacious corporate interests and
the religious right – attack dissent and criticism in a manner that comprises a
threat to America more calamitous than even McCarthyism and Richard Nixon.

“I lived through McCarthy; I was
at Madison during that time. But this is the worst, this is truly frightening,”
said Laughlin. “We’re out now desperately trying put this together. Raising
money for the film, raising money for the campaign. McCarthy was nothing
compared to Bush and Rove. We’re out of time. We need patriots to act now to
save this country.”

Laughlin’s sense of urgency is
obvious in his voice especially when the self-taught Jungian scholar talks about
George Bush personally. He sees the American president as suffering from a
personality disorder stemming from inadequacy and believes Bush to be a
genuinely delusional person, isolated in the presidential cocoon.

“Bush is really a paranoid
personality. He has the most dangerous inferiority complex. He is a guy who is
desperate to be king, but there is nothing royal in him. The ‘mother complex’ in
Bush is frightening. Everything he is doing is he is trying to prove he is a
man. To him, really and truly, he is so delusional that he thinks war is a video
game, and he’s John Wayne. And worse is the evil Karl Rove behind Bush,“ said
Laughlin.

Laughlin brands the Bush
administration as anti-American politics incarnate, eroding the right to dissent
in America, and the right of Americans to fulfill themselves in an era where
smearing gays and peace activists is the predominant mode of communication in
the Republican Party.

“I think America is the only
truly liberated society on earth. By liberated, I mean you are able to develop
your capacity to the fullest without interference. It is the only country in the
world that was formed specifically for a moral purpose, that every person had
this right. That has been taken away by a thousand forms of corruption, all that
have gotten much worse under Bush. We have no time left,” said Laughlin.

As a young man, athletics came to
bore Laughlin [Laughlin calls himself a “tramp athlete” back then] and so did
school, and he went into filmmaking, bringing with him his commitment to
protecting the rights of others honed since grade school.

Now, Laughlin speaks of his
country as one of his earliest inspirations.

Jefferson
Memorial

“Way back in my 20s, I had made
my first film and I was in Washington showing it. I went over to the Jefferson
Memorial, and I went into that monument about midnight, no one was there. I read
on the top of that monument: ‘I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal
hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man’. That was like
Paul on the way to the Damascus. I was struck dumb. I stayed there for at least
three hours. I wept. I read all of the stuff and just said ‘Who is this guy? Who
is this guy? He is America,’” said Laughlin.

Those wishing to contribute to
the film and the peace campaign can visit the BillyJack.com and
EndtheIraqWar.com websites for more information.

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Michael Leon

Michael Leon is a writer living in Madison, Wisconsin. His reporting has been recognized by the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. Leon's writing has appeared nationally in The Progressive, The Advocate, In These Times, CounterPunch and The Champion—the journal of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and locally in the Isthmus, the Capital Times and the Fitchburg Star. Leon works as a writer, editor, veterans' advocate, and public relations consultant.